-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- CONTENTS -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- INTRO What is Ray Tracing? 1 Ray Tracing Software 1.1 POV-Ray 1.2 Polyray 1.3 Vivid (including BOB) 1.4 Rayshade 1.5 Radiance 1.6 Others 1.7 Non-Ray Tracing Software 2 FTP Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc. 2.1 FTP Sites 2.2 Bulletin Board Systems 2.3 Mailing Lists 2.4 Others 3 Utilities and Other Software 3.1 Modelling Software 3.2 Format Conversion Utilities 3.3 Creation Creators 3.4 Texture Editors 3.5 Animation 3.6 Misc 4 Further Information and Resources 4.1 On-line Resources 4.2 Other Newsgroups 4.3 Books 4.4 Image Libraries 4.5 Texture Libraries 5 Frequently Asked Question 5.1 "Who is..." 5.2 "This picture doesn't trace." 5.3 "I traced my picture, but I can't see anything." 5.4 "Rotating this object doesn't work properly." 5.5 "Where can I find model data for..." 5.6 "How can I view these pictures?" 5.7 "Can I post binaries to this group?" 5.8 "What does this mean..." 5.9 "How can I Email someone on CompuServe?" 5.10 "What is the difference between rendering and ray-tracing?" 6 Roll The Credits... EPILOGUE -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- INTRO What is Ray Tracing? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Ray Tracing, in a one-line description, is a method that allows you to create stunning photo-realistic images on a computer. All you need is a computer, some ray tracing software, a little imagination and some patience. The first stage of creating this masterpiece is to "describe" what it is that you want to depict in your picture. You may do this using an interactive modelling system, like a CAD package, or by creating a text file that has a programming language-like syntax to describe the elements. Either way, you will be specifying what objects are in your imaginary world, what shape they are, where they are, what colour and texture they have and where the light sources are to illuminate them. Having done all of this, you feed it into your ray tracer, sit back and wait. And wait... That's the main drawback of ray tracing - it's not fast. The software actually mathematically models the light rays as they bounce around this virtual world, reflecting, refracting and generally having a good time until they end up in the lense of your imaginary camera. This can quite literally involve thousands and millions of floating-point calculations and this takes time. Tracing images can take anything from a few minutes to many days. It's a long process, I know, but the results can make it all worth while. Ray tracing isn't the only method for creating photo-realistic pictures. There are packages like 3D Studio which uses scanline rendering, Radiance, which uses radiosity, and so on. Although these don't count as ray tracing, the methods you use from one system to the next are often sufficiently similar to warrant their discussion in this group. So if you think it's relevant, feel free to bring it up. These systems will be mentioned in a little more detail later on. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 1 Ray Tracing Software -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 1.1 POV-Ray The Persistance of Vision Ray Tracer (POV-Ray) is an all-round excellent package, but there are two things that particularly make it stand out above the rest of the crowd. Firstly, it's free, and secondly, the source is distributed so you can compile it on virtually any platform. It's without doubt the most used package among the comp.graphics.raytracing crowd and well worth checking out if you haven't already. POV-Ray is based on David Buck's original ray tracer, DKB-Trace and has been (and still is) developed and supported by a whole crowd of people on CompuServe Graphics Developers' Forum (GO GRAPHDEV). For more info, see the POV-Ray docs. The latest version is 2.2 and the following list, taken from the official POV-Ray docs, details some of the main features. * Easy to use scene description language * Large library of stunning example scene files * Standard include files that pre-define many shapes, colors and textures * Very high quality output image files (24-bit color.) * 15 and 24 bit color display on IBM-PC's using appropriate hardware * Create landscapes using smoothed height fields * Spotlights for sophisticated lighting * Phong and specular highlighting for more realistic-looking surfaces. * Several image file output formats including Targa, dump and raw * Wide range of shapes: * Basic Shape Primitives such as... Sphere, Box, Quadric, Cylinder, Cone, Triangle and Plane * Advanced Shape Primitives such as... Torus (Donut), Hyperboloid, Paraboloid, Bezier Patch, Height Fields (Mountains), Blobs, Quartics, Smooth Triangles (Phong shaded) * Shapes can easily be combined to create new complex shapes. This feature is called Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG). POV-Ray supports unions, merges, intersections and differences in CSG. * Objects are assigned materials called textures. (A texture describes the coloring and surface properties of a shape.) * Built-in color patterns: Agate, Bozo, Checker, Granite, Gradient, Leopard, Mandel, Marble, Onion, Spotted, Radial, Wood and image file mapping. * Built-in surface bump patterns: Bumps, Dents, Ripples, Waves, Wrinkles and mapping. * Users can create their own textures or use pre-defined textures such as... Mirror, Metals like Chrome, Brass, Gold and Silver, Bright Blue Sky with Clouds, Sunset with Clouds, Sapphire Agate, Jade, Shiny, Brown Agate, Apocalypse, Blood Marble, Glass, Brown Onion, Pine Wood, Cherry Wood * Combine textures using layering of semi-transparent textures or tile or material map files. * Display preview of image while computing (not available on all computers) * Halt rendering when part way through * Continue rendering a halted partial scene later There are now two official distribution sites for POV-Ray. The first is alfred.ccs.carleton.ca [134.117.1.1] and the second, more recent one, is uniwa.uwa.edu.au [130.95.128.1] The files that make up POV-Ray are: - povsrc-2.2.zip Source files for compiling POV-Ray yourself. - povdoc-2.2.zip Documentation - povscn-2.2.zip Sample scenes - povibm-2.2.exe Runtime binary for IBM PC systems. Depending on where you look, you may also find binaries for other platforms or the above archives packaged in different formats. Definately worth a mention here is Dieter Beyer's Faster Than POV-Ray (ftpovray) which is a custom build that incorporates many speed-ups and enhancements to the original POV-Ray. Not all scenes benefit from the enhancements and some may even run slower, but in certain cases, speed increases by an order of magnitude are possible. The archive ftpv20.zip is available from most of the major POV FTP sites. 1.2 Polyray Polyray is a close cousin to POV-Ray and shares many features with it. Harry Rowe elaborates: "If you have access to a lowly 486 or Pentium (like I use), why not try out Polyray v1.7 from Alexander Enzmann (XANDER). He is also an original member of the POV team. It does the familiar fx(u,v), fy(u,v), fz(u,v) parametric surface. I am playing with building an include file of Alan Barr's Superquadrics. It also includes: * Implicit functions f(x,y,z) // Unique to shareware/freeware tracers * Numerical expressions to include trig and dot products. * Conditional expressions * NURBS (trim curves are coming in the next release) * Glyphs (TrueType Font conversions) * Particle systems * Good animation support * For polynomial f(x,y,z), there are 3 root-solvers; Ferrari, Vieta and Sturm. Though, due to numerical inaccuracies, no amount of root-solving will help some poly surfaces from rendering correctly in all directions. You may experience some pixel drop-outs. * Focal Blur in addition to the pin hole camera. * *Finally* added the last Affine: Shearing Registered version ($35.00) uses virtual memory in addition to the coprocessor. You also don't have to spend $9.64/hr on CIS GRAPHDEV to get support from XANDER." Polyray v1.7 is currently available from wuarchive.wustl.edu in the directory /pub/msdos_uploads/graphics. See the file ply.txt for info. 1.3 Vivid (including BOB) Vivid is a shareware ray tracer for IBM PC's by Stephen Coy . Version 2, the current publicly available version, is available from several FTP sites as vivid2.zip. Registration will costs you $50 U.S. which will get you version 2.0a19, released 6/30/93. Version 3 is expected soon. Compared to POV-Ray, Vivid doesn't have as many features, but in many cases it can run faster. Source code isn't available, so the package is limited to the one platform. Stephen Coy, Christopher Watkins and Mark Finlay co-authored a book on Ray Tracing called "Photorealism and Ray Tracing in C" (see section 4.3). Distributed free with the book was an example ray tracer called BOB. This was actually a cut down version of Vivid which did include source. 1.4 Rayshade Rayshade is a free ray tracing package for unix/X11. The "official" ftp site is: - princeton.edu/pub/Graphics/rayshade.4.0 (erm...) 1.5 Radiance Radiance is a free software package that adopts a radiosity-type approach to lighting simluation. It's author, Greg Ward , discusses it here: "I've spent the past nine or so years developing a ray-tracing program for lighting simulation and rendering called Radiance. Although it doesn't use the typical finite-element/form-factor approach of radiosity programs, it does compute what they compute plus some. Specifically, Radiance computes diffuse, specular and directional- diffuse reflection and transmission in arbitrarily complicated environments. Here is a short description: Radiance is a suite of programs for the analysis and visualization of lighting in design. Input files specify the scene geometry, materials, luminaires, time, date and sky conditions (for daylight calculations). Calculated values include spectral radiance (ie. luminance + color), irradiance (illuminance + color) and glare indices. Simulation results may be displayed as color images, numerical values and contour plots. The primary advantage of Radiance over simpler lighting calculation and rendering tools is that there are no limitations on the geometry or the materials that may be simulated. Radiance is used by architects and engineers to predict illumination, visual quality and appearance of innovative design spaces, and by researchers to evaluate new lighting and daylighting technologies. Radiance has been written up in many technical and non-technical articles in various journals and magazines. Most recently, a Radiance-generated image appeared on the cover of the 1992 Siggraph Proceedings. This year, I hope there is going to be a long systems paper at Siggraph describing the software. The software is free, runs on most UNIX/X11 platforms (including Linux), and is available in source form via anonymous ftp from hobbes.lbl.gov (128.3.12.38) in California and nestor.epfl.ch (128.178.139.3) in Switzerland. (Please use the one that's closer.) There are hundreds of happy Radiance users world-wide, including public and private research institutions as well as engineering and architecture firms. I guess that's all I can think of to say about it at the moment... -Greg" 1.6 Others There are many other ray tracing packages available; ART, DKBtrace, RTrace, RAY4, MTV, QRT, DBW for instance, and some for distributed (parallel) tracing: XDART, Inetray, RRLib, prt, VM_pRAY. See the comp.graphics FAQ or Eric Haines' lists for more info on these (see section 4.1) 1.7 Non-Ray Tracing Software * 3D Studio Autodesk's 3d Studio is an interactive 3d modelling, rendering and animation package for the IBM PC platform. It employs scanline rendering to achieve photo-realistic effects rather than ray-tracing. Because of this, it cannot do true shadows, reflections or refractions, but can, in many cases, simulate them accurately enough for most purposes. The package costs around $3000 or $1200 with the educational discount. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 2 FTP Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 2.1 FTP Sites The following list details some of the main graphics related FTP sites, their maintainers (where known) and any other info. For a more complete list of FTP sites, see the list by Eric Haines and Nick Fotis from which much of the following has been taken. * wuarchive.wustl.edu [128.252.135.4]: George Kyriazis A huge repository of graphics stuff, particulary: - /graphics/graphics - get CONTENTS file. - /graphics/graphics/objects/TDDD - the TTDDD objects and converters. - /mirrors/unix-c/graphics - Rayshade, MTV, Vort, FBM, PBMPLUS, etc. - /mirrors/msdos/graphics - DKB ray tracer, FLI RayTracker demos. - /graphics/graphics/mirrors - mirrors many sites. - /pub/rad.tar.Z - SGI_RAD. - /graphics/graphics/radiosity - Radiance and Indian radiosity package. - /systems/ibmpc/msdos/graphics - loads of PC graphics stuff. * ftp.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de [134.106.1.9] : Frank Neumann Another good site for ray tracing, particulary POV-Ray. Recently been re-organised: - /pub/pov-ray - get INDEX for full details - /pub/pov-ray/conv - format converters - /pub/pov-ray/edit - graphical editors - /pub/pov-ray/ext - source extensions - /pub/pov-ray/gen - data file generators - /pub/pov-ray/misc - other tools, ray tracers, etc. - /pub/pov-ray/new - uploads - /pub/pov-ray/obj - objects - /pub/pov-ray/pack - compression - /pub/pov-ray/pix - pictures - /pub/pov-ray/scen - scenes - /pub/pov-ray/text - text articles - /pub/pov-ray/view - viewers - /pub/pov-ray/pbin - unofficial POV binaries * alfred.ccs.carleton.ca [134.117.1.1]: David Buck Official distribution site of dkb-trace and POV-Ray: - /pub/dkbtrace - DKB ray tracer - /pub/pov-ray - POV-Ray * uniwa.uwa.edu.au [130.95.128.1] Christopher Cason Official secondary distribution site for POV-Ray. Also has utils, scenes and images, including a Hall of Fame and an Image of the Month. - /pub/povray - Official POV distribution and more. See the file CONTENTS_PLEASE_READ (or finger povray@uniwa.uwa.edu.au). * princeton.edu [128.112.128.1]: Craig Kolb - /pub/Graphics - Rayshade, RT News, Wilson's RT abstracts, RT bib, Utah Raster Toolkit, Graphics Gems I, II & III code, etc. * avalon.chinalake.navy.mil [129.131.1.225]: Francisco X DeJesus This site was created to be a 3D object "repository" for the net. 3D objects (multiple formats), utilities, file format documents. Note that connections are refused from any sites whose name can't be resolved. If this happens, check with you network people that your namesever is running and is up to date. * hobbes.lbl.gov [128.3.12.38]: Greg Ward Official distribution site for Radiance ray trace/radiosity package. * rtfm.mit.edu [18.70.0.209]: - /pub/usenet/news.answers - the land of FAQs. Graphics and pictures directories of particular interest. [Also available from mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu. Send sending a mail message containing: help for more info] 2.2 Bulletin Board Systems The following list details some Bulletin Boards Systems dedicated to graphics and, in particular Ray Tracing. At the end of the section there is a list of BBS'es of PCGNet (Professional CAD and Graphics Network) kindly provided by Bjorn-Kare Nilssen * The Graphics Alternative TGA is heavily orientated around Ray Tracing, 3D Rendering, Modelling and Animation. It's the official support BBS for Vivid and has an extensive library of utilities, programs, source and images built up by its 1300+ users. Location: El Cerrito, CA, USA. Sysop: Adam Shiffman Data: (510) 524-2780 (PM14400FXSA v.32bis 14.4k, Public) (510) 524-2165 (USR DS v.32bis/HST 14.4k, Subscribers) * You Can Call Me Ray Another Ray Tracing specific BBS, this time in Chicago. Lots of interesting stuff. Location: Chicago Suburbia, USA. Sysops: Bill Minus & Aaron Collins Data: (708) 358-5611 * Pi Squared On the East Coast of the USA is Pi Squared. Alfonso Hermida is the sysop and he is the creator of POVCAD. All the latest POV files available as well as support for his own products. Location: Maryland, USA. Sysop: Alfonso Hermida (CIS: 72114,2060) Data: (301) 725-9080 (14.4K, 24hrs) * The Tackle Box Another BBS dedicated to POV-Ray with hundreds of modelling utilities, source, pictures and animations. 1.2 GIG online, with a CD-Rom Ray Tracing disk coming online shortly. Location: Edmond, Oklahoma, USA. Sysop: Neil Clark Data: (405) 459-3301 (14.4K, N/8/1, 24hrs) * The New Graphics BBS A graphics specific system for those interested in 3D, objects, image processing, animation, MPEG, JPEG, GIF, file formats, etc. Knowledge Media "Graphics 1" CD-ROM available, 645 Mb "MultiMedia" CD online shortly. Location: ? Sysop: Bob Lindabury Data: (908) 469-0049 (14.4K, 24hrs) * The Graphics Emporium BBS A BBS for the graphics professional and hobbyist to exchange ideas, information and creativity. Not dedicated to any one platform. Location: Redondo Beach, CA, USA. Sysop: ? Data: (310) 374-8805 * Boards of the Professional CAD and Graphics Network USA and Canada ------------------------------------------------------------------- SAUG BBS Bellevue WA 206-644-7115 Joes CODE BBS West Bloomfield MI 313-855-0894 CHAOS BBS Columbia MO 314-874-2930 Engineering Services Atlanta GA 404-325-0122 Autodesk Global Village Sausalito CA 415-289-2270 Route 66 Solutions Albuquerque NM 505-294-4543 The Graphics Alternative El Cerrito CA 510-524-2780 PC-AUG Phoenix AZ 602-952-0638 Convergence Spline BBS Richmond BC 604-275-3462 Graphicly Speaking Langley BC 604-534-2954 Granite BBS St. Cloud MN 612-654-8372 Tern Solution BBS Ottawa ON 613-228-0539 Canis Major Nashville TN 615-385-4268 CAD Engineering Services Hendersonville TN 615-822-2539 The Virtual Dimension Oceanside CA 619-722-0746 The Drawing Board BBS Anchorage AL 907-349-5412 The University Shrewsbury Twp NJ 908-544-8193 France ------------------------------------------------------------------- CAD Connection Montesson 33-1-39529854 Zyllius BBS! Saint Paul 33-93320505 United Kingdom ------------------------------------------------------------------- Raytech BBS Tain, UK 44-862-88340 The Missing Link Surrey, England 44-81-641-8593 CADenza BBS Leicester, UK 44-533-596725 New Zealand ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Graphics Connection Wellington 64-4-566-8450 Australia ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Baud Room Melbourne 61-3-481-6873 Sydney PCUG Compaq New South Wales 61-2-540-1842 My Computer Company Erskineville 61-2-557-1489 Slovenia ------------------------------------------------------------------- MicroArt Koper 386-66-34986 Germany ------------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS BBS Duesseldorf 49-211-680-1458 The Netherlands ------------------------------------------------------------------- BBS_Bennekom: Fractal Board Bennekom 31-8389-15331 CAD-BBS Amsterdam 31-20-6861533 Foundation One Baarn 31-2154-22143 Some of the above may require additional country or long-distance codes. 2.3 Mailing Lists Listed below is a selection of mailing lists related to graphics and/or ray tracing. If I haven't included specific details on subscription, it's because I don't know. Best bet is to send a "help" message. * POV-Ray Called the dkb-list for historical reasons (POV-Ray was based on David Buck's "DKBTrace"), the list exists for users of POV-Ray and associated products, on all platforms. Subscription: listserv@trearn.bitnet Body Text: subscribe dkb-l Posting: dkb-l@trearn.bitnet * Rayshade Mailing list for Rayshade users, mainly on UNIX platforms. Subscription: rayshade-request@cs.princeton.edu Posting: rayshade-users@cs.princeton.edu * Radiance Greg Ward, the author of Radiance has a distribution list of all users. Register with him: greg@pink.lbl.gov * Imagine For users of the Imagine 3d rendering and animation package for the Amiga and, more recently, the IBM PC. Subscription: imagine-request@email.sp.paramax.com Posting: imagine@email.sp.paramax.com * Toaster This mailing list deals with the Video Toaster system for the Amiga. Subscription: toaster-request@bobsbox.rent.com Body Text: subscribe
toaster Posting: toaster@bobsbox.rent.com * Lightwave Lightwave is part of the suite of programs that come with the Video Toaster system for the Amiga. Subscription: lightwave-request@bobsbox.rent.com Body Text: subscribe
lightwave Posting: lightwave@bobsbox.rent.com * 3D Studio Autodesk's 3d modelling and scanline rendering system for the IBM PC. Subscription: 3dstudio-request@bobsbox.rent.com Body Text: subscribe
3dstudio Posting: 3dstudio@bobsbox.rent.com 2.4 Others * CompuServe The CompuServe Graphics Developers' Forum (GO GRAPHDEV) is the home of POV-Ray (section 8 POV Sources and section 9 POV Images) as well as other development projects including fractals, animation and morphing. You can get information of joining CompuServe (in the US) by calling (800) 848-8990. CompuServe access is now available in other countries, including Japan and Europe. * America On-Line AOL also has a section (PCGRAPHICS) dedicated to POV-Ray support. * World Wide Web Ian Grimstead has collected together a large collection of over 360 pages on-line of ray tracing papers. It is accessible via the World-Wide Web and has links to other on-line papers and documentation and to other ray tracing web pages. - hhtp://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Ray.Tracing/ Marius Watz has set up a WWW page for POV utilities, containing information about some of the most popular ones and allowing you to download them directly from the page. - hhtp://www.ifi.uio.no/~mariusw/pov/utilities.html